I jumped into Metal Gear Solid II: Sons of Liberty right after beating Metal Gear Solid 1 and I'm very glad I did. Metal Gear Solid II is a true sequel to MGS 1, which ends on a post-credits phone call scene between one of the antagonists of MGS 1 and the president of the USA. MGS 2 released on November 13, 2001 for the PlayStation 2, which means this game released three years after the original and for a new generation of consoles.
As someone who has played a lot of old school games over the past couple years, I was pretty used to MGS 1's visuals (I usually played games before the 32-bit era, so MGS 1's visuals actually looked really good in that respect). This meant that seeing the jump to MGS 2 and all those improvements felt even more exciting and I can happily say that MGS 2 truely feels next-gen for its time. Visuals are much improved, controls are smoothed out and gameplay has a lot more features, including much more persistent enemy AI, among other things.
So if you enjoyed MGS 1, MGS 2 is a must-play, though I preferred MGS 1 slightly over its sequel for a couple reasons which I will go over in my full review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
There is a lot I loved about Metal Gear Solid 2's story. The last two hours of it felt incredibly relevant for today and I'd almost consider the story GOATed just for that (the story was relevant in its time for other aspects, as the 9/11 incident occured just before release and a lot of content had to be cut, as it was too similar, which is just eerie). There are some very emotional scenes in the game that were excellent in delivery and near made my cry in one particular scene. Finally, there are two full "books" in the Bonus section of the game with 100+ and 300+ pages (though with a very low word count per page, so around 1 hour's worth of reading for the latter), the sort of detail that I love in games. One is from the perspective of Nastascha Romanenko, who was on comm support in the first game, and the other is from a conspiracy theorists perspective.
Overall, there is a lot to like here. The setting is great (the Big Shell part especially), the themes are great and well-explored, the bait and switch part I was more than OK with (though I see how people at the time could have been mad), Otacon remains a legend, the connection between war and misery and how it affects nearly every character in the game is just very tragic and finally, Snake's post-game speech is fantastic. The two things I thought could have been better was 1) keeping the 4th-wall breaking or the jokes out of certain scenes, as it took away from their meaning a little bit and 2) the gameplay-cutscene balance. The series is obviously famous for "interrupting" gameplay with cutscenes and codec calls on a regular basis, and while it's not something I see negatively per se, I thought MGS 1 struck that balance better. Maybe it happened this often here because Kojima realized how many more cutscenes he could fit in thanks to the power of the PS2? Either way, I can see how certain gamers would not be too fond of this, though it didn't reach WTF levels for me.
A final word regarding the game's preditive nature and its themes. Look at these quotes that are incredibly relevant regarding social media and fake news. "Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander..." / "All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate" / "The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths". There is more like this on that topic, on AI, on censorship and more. The game also explores themes more hopeful and in a more optimistic way, which I hope you discover on your own by playing this game, but suffice it to say that I loved the messaging and I can see why a lot of players where impacted by these games at a younger age, when even today I can only tip my hat to Hideo Kojima for this.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
As with the Storytelling part, gameplay could have been slightly more enjoyable, if the balance was struck better. Rarely do you play for more than 5-10 minutes uninterrupted, unless you are really lost on what to do or where to go next, which can happen on two or three occasions. TIP: Keep an eye out for doors that require a higher level keycard to open. When you get an upgrade to your keycard, go back to these places to sometimes find items that you will need for later.
Gameplay overall is once again very unique and a lot of fun in Metal Gear Solid 2. The movement controls have been smoothed out a bit over the original and you feel more in control of what exactly you are doing here. There are also several other improvements and additions that have been made. Most notably, whenever you alert enemies to your presence, they don't become completely oblivious to your presence after the fact. Instead, they stay on alert afterwards by keeping more guards in that area and by roaming the place searching for you. Meanwhile, you can use some more tactics yourself to stay out of sight or gain an advantage in combat. First-person mode lets you aim at specific targets, you can peek out from cover and quickly take a shot at enemies and you can hang off of railings to get past enemies that cover walkways.
As per usual, boss battles are a big part in this Metal Gear game. It's subjective, but I think I enjoyed the bosses in MGS 1 more, though I think this speaks more positively of MGS 1's bosses than it does negatively of MGS 2's. There are memorable boss fights in this game and the antagonists are all very interesting personalities, but the Fatman fight for example took too long imo while the Metal Gear battle felt almost insulting to the threat Metal Gears are supposed to represent, as you can take out not just one, but 3 (!) of them singlehandedly in this game. But then there is Vamp, the Solidus fight and the Metal Gear and Fatman fight having their positive qualities that are definitely worth mentioning, plus the aura of impossibility surrounding Fortune and just like that, you got a pretty strong line up. The resolution to these boss fights were also pretty satisfying and I'm sensing a theme that defeating every boss in Metal Gear games is just a bittersweet experience.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Voice acting is great once again, which isn't too usual for a game of this era. The only character whose voice acting I didn't quite enjoy for a while was Rose, but I feel like that got better over time. The sound design is great just like in MGS 1 but takes it up a notch, especially with its use of ambient sounds and music in each area that you are, whether it's on the connecting bridges outside at the Big Shell where you hear the wind and the birds chirping, whether it's the sick Crew's Lounge track or the sounds of rain on the Tanker and more, it's really well done and adds something distinct that you can remember these locations by.
The soundtrack is great as well. Just listen to the Main Theme and you should already be hooked. The game's subtitle is "Tactical Espionage Action" once again, and the soundtrack captures that very well throughout while adding an additional pinch of epic or suspense to the tracks whenever appropriate. And shoutout to Fortune's theme as well, it captures the Metal Gear theme so well.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
Visuals are much improved over the original. It helps that locations are more varied in this game as well, which keeps things looking more fresh visually, especially in terms of color. Once again, what makes the game stand out is its presentation, especially in cutscenes.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The quintessential Metal Gear atmosphere shines through once again. The feeling of being a special ops spy, especially when you manage to get past a particularly tough section of the game undetected. The seemingly supernatural antagonists that are omnipresent. The exploration of real world themes. This time, all this happens in multiple locations to keep things fresh visually as well. On top of that, you have the final two hours and some parts of the game as a whole that can leave you thinking through things for hours. I'm not going to spoil anything, but it's pretty special at times.
CONTENT | 9/10
Unlike Metal Gear Solid 1, there is a lot more additional content apart from the main story. There are collectable dog tags in this game for example to provide a challenge to those looking for it. Personally, I didn't get a single one because I forgot about them after I read about them before starting the main game, but also because they don't just lie around everywhere but have to be acquired by pointing your gun at an unsuspecting enemy for several seconds, which makes their dog tag drop.
Then there are a lot of VR missions and alternative missions to play through if you want, the latter of which include bomb disposal mode, elimination mode and hold up mode, with several challenges in each. Finally, you can read three "books" / "reports" to get more background information and different perspectives on events in the first game. It also serves as a refresher on the original's story, if you didn't pick up MGS2 straight after MGS1.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
For as great as a setting the Big Shell is visually, repetition is unavoidable due to its layout. The game keeps things fresh in terms of your objectives often enough to where I never truly got bored or anything like that, and each strut looks more than different enough once you're inside but walking over the same bridges multiple times wasn't always enjoyable. Then there is the Fatman boss fight, which just takes way too long and is also way too repetitive.
Other than that though, levels and locations are packed with plenty of different methods to achieving different objectives that you are going to face through your 10+ hours with this game. The Tanker chapter is a great introductory level that highlights all the great parts with MGS 2's gameplay as well.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
MGS 2 doesn't innovate as much as its predecessor, but that wasn't going to be possible anyway. Where it can and does succeed a lot is in its concepts and exploring those pretty thoroughly, and in a way that is relevant even to this day, if not much more so.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
After beating the main game, there is only one thing that makes it replayable, which is exploring higher difficulty settings. For things to do outside of the main game, check out "Content".
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 89/100
The Metal Gear Solid series keeps going strong with MGS 2, another fantastic stealth action game which proves to also be prophetic through its exploration of its themes. "In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness". Unlike trivial information though, there is nothing trivial about MGS 2, and I'm glad it gets to be preserved with the upcoming Metal Gear Solid collection. I'll likely pick that up and play through this and the other MGS games rather soon. I'd recommend every other gamer to try the series out as well.
As someone who has played a lot of old school games over the past couple years, I was pretty used to MGS 1's visuals (I usually played games before the 32-bit era, so MGS 1's visuals actually looked really good in that respect). This meant that seeing the jump to MGS 2 and all those improvements felt even more exciting and I can happily say that MGS 2 truely feels next-gen for its time. Visuals are much improved, controls are smoothed out and gameplay has a lot more features, including much more persistent enemy AI, among other things.
So if you enjoyed MGS 1, MGS 2 is a must-play, though I preferred MGS 1 slightly over its sequel for a couple reasons which I will go over in my full review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
There is a lot I loved about Metal Gear Solid 2's story. The last two hours of it felt incredibly relevant for today and I'd almost consider the story GOATed just for that (the story was relevant in its time for other aspects, as the 9/11 incident occured just before release and a lot of content had to be cut, as it was too similar, which is just eerie). There are some very emotional scenes in the game that were excellent in delivery and near made my cry in one particular scene. Finally, there are two full "books" in the Bonus section of the game with 100+ and 300+ pages (though with a very low word count per page, so around 1 hour's worth of reading for the latter), the sort of detail that I love in games. One is from the perspective of Nastascha Romanenko, who was on comm support in the first game, and the other is from a conspiracy theorists perspective.
Overall, there is a lot to like here. The setting is great (the Big Shell part especially), the themes are great and well-explored, the bait and switch part I was more than OK with (though I see how people at the time could have been mad), Otacon remains a legend, the connection between war and misery and how it affects nearly every character in the game is just very tragic and finally, Snake's post-game speech is fantastic. The two things I thought could have been better was 1) keeping the 4th-wall breaking or the jokes out of certain scenes, as it took away from their meaning a little bit and 2) the gameplay-cutscene balance. The series is obviously famous for "interrupting" gameplay with cutscenes and codec calls on a regular basis, and while it's not something I see negatively per se, I thought MGS 1 struck that balance better. Maybe it happened this often here because Kojima realized how many more cutscenes he could fit in thanks to the power of the PS2? Either way, I can see how certain gamers would not be too fond of this, though it didn't reach WTF levels for me.
A final word regarding the game's preditive nature and its themes. Look at these quotes that are incredibly relevant regarding social media and fake news. "Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander..." / "All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate" / "The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths". There is more like this on that topic, on AI, on censorship and more. The game also explores themes more hopeful and in a more optimistic way, which I hope you discover on your own by playing this game, but suffice it to say that I loved the messaging and I can see why a lot of players where impacted by these games at a younger age, when even today I can only tip my hat to Hideo Kojima for this.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
As with the Storytelling part, gameplay could have been slightly more enjoyable, if the balance was struck better. Rarely do you play for more than 5-10 minutes uninterrupted, unless you are really lost on what to do or where to go next, which can happen on two or three occasions. TIP: Keep an eye out for doors that require a higher level keycard to open. When you get an upgrade to your keycard, go back to these places to sometimes find items that you will need for later.
Gameplay overall is once again very unique and a lot of fun in Metal Gear Solid 2. The movement controls have been smoothed out a bit over the original and you feel more in control of what exactly you are doing here. There are also several other improvements and additions that have been made. Most notably, whenever you alert enemies to your presence, they don't become completely oblivious to your presence after the fact. Instead, they stay on alert afterwards by keeping more guards in that area and by roaming the place searching for you. Meanwhile, you can use some more tactics yourself to stay out of sight or gain an advantage in combat. First-person mode lets you aim at specific targets, you can peek out from cover and quickly take a shot at enemies and you can hang off of railings to get past enemies that cover walkways.
As per usual, boss battles are a big part in this Metal Gear game. It's subjective, but I think I enjoyed the bosses in MGS 1 more, though I think this speaks more positively of MGS 1's bosses than it does negatively of MGS 2's. There are memorable boss fights in this game and the antagonists are all very interesting personalities, but the Fatman fight for example took too long imo while the Metal Gear battle felt almost insulting to the threat Metal Gears are supposed to represent, as you can take out not just one, but 3 (!) of them singlehandedly in this game. But then there is Vamp, the Solidus fight and the Metal Gear and Fatman fight having their positive qualities that are definitely worth mentioning, plus the aura of impossibility surrounding Fortune and just like that, you got a pretty strong line up. The resolution to these boss fights were also pretty satisfying and I'm sensing a theme that defeating every boss in Metal Gear games is just a bittersweet experience.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Voice acting is great once again, which isn't too usual for a game of this era. The only character whose voice acting I didn't quite enjoy for a while was Rose, but I feel like that got better over time. The sound design is great just like in MGS 1 but takes it up a notch, especially with its use of ambient sounds and music in each area that you are, whether it's on the connecting bridges outside at the Big Shell where you hear the wind and the birds chirping, whether it's the sick Crew's Lounge track or the sounds of rain on the Tanker and more, it's really well done and adds something distinct that you can remember these locations by.
The soundtrack is great as well. Just listen to the Main Theme and you should already be hooked. The game's subtitle is "Tactical Espionage Action" once again, and the soundtrack captures that very well throughout while adding an additional pinch of epic or suspense to the tracks whenever appropriate. And shoutout to Fortune's theme as well, it captures the Metal Gear theme so well.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
Visuals are much improved over the original. It helps that locations are more varied in this game as well, which keeps things looking more fresh visually, especially in terms of color. Once again, what makes the game stand out is its presentation, especially in cutscenes.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The quintessential Metal Gear atmosphere shines through once again. The feeling of being a special ops spy, especially when you manage to get past a particularly tough section of the game undetected. The seemingly supernatural antagonists that are omnipresent. The exploration of real world themes. This time, all this happens in multiple locations to keep things fresh visually as well. On top of that, you have the final two hours and some parts of the game as a whole that can leave you thinking through things for hours. I'm not going to spoil anything, but it's pretty special at times.
CONTENT | 9/10
Unlike Metal Gear Solid 1, there is a lot more additional content apart from the main story. There are collectable dog tags in this game for example to provide a challenge to those looking for it. Personally, I didn't get a single one because I forgot about them after I read about them before starting the main game, but also because they don't just lie around everywhere but have to be acquired by pointing your gun at an unsuspecting enemy for several seconds, which makes their dog tag drop.
Then there are a lot of VR missions and alternative missions to play through if you want, the latter of which include bomb disposal mode, elimination mode and hold up mode, with several challenges in each. Finally, you can read three "books" / "reports" to get more background information and different perspectives on events in the first game. It also serves as a refresher on the original's story, if you didn't pick up MGS2 straight after MGS1.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
For as great as a setting the Big Shell is visually, repetition is unavoidable due to its layout. The game keeps things fresh in terms of your objectives often enough to where I never truly got bored or anything like that, and each strut looks more than different enough once you're inside but walking over the same bridges multiple times wasn't always enjoyable. Then there is the Fatman boss fight, which just takes way too long and is also way too repetitive.
Other than that though, levels and locations are packed with plenty of different methods to achieving different objectives that you are going to face through your 10+ hours with this game. The Tanker chapter is a great introductory level that highlights all the great parts with MGS 2's gameplay as well.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
MGS 2 doesn't innovate as much as its predecessor, but that wasn't going to be possible anyway. Where it can and does succeed a lot is in its concepts and exploring those pretty thoroughly, and in a way that is relevant even to this day, if not much more so.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
After beating the main game, there is only one thing that makes it replayable, which is exploring higher difficulty settings. For things to do outside of the main game, check out "Content".
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 89/100
The Metal Gear Solid series keeps going strong with MGS 2, another fantastic stealth action game which proves to also be prophetic through its exploration of its themes. "In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness". Unlike trivial information though, there is nothing trivial about MGS 2, and I'm glad it gets to be preserved with the upcoming Metal Gear Solid collection. I'll likely pick that up and play through this and the other MGS games rather soon. I'd recommend every other gamer to try the series out as well.